STEM MILES: Mentoring Innovative Learning Experiences for Students

在国家科学基金会科学，技术，工程和数学奖学金（S-STEM）计划的资助下，STEM MILES（科学，技术，工程和数学指导学生创新学习体验）项目正在为低收入学生提供支持，这些学生表现出经济需求和学术承诺，以在圣罗莎初级学院的STEM学科中取得成功。这项努力旨在通过扩大社区学院教师在咨询和指导方面的作用，同时将该作用与财政支持相结合，来提高低收入，学术天赋的STEM学生的学术成果。社区学院的学生将获得高接触，重点教师咨询模式，通常在较小的私立四年制高等教育机构。将招募60名主修生物科学、化学、物理、工程或数学的低收入家庭学生，在补助金有效期内分三批，每批20名学生。在圣罗莎初级学院STEM教师的跨学科团队的带领下，STEM MILES项目将提供干预措施，培养学生的科学自我效能感，身份，动机和价值观，这些价值观有助于成功转移到四年制院校或完成STEM领域的学位。为了加强他们对科学界的归属感，并鼓励他们坚持STEM学术途径，MILES学者将参加科学批判性思维的跨学科课程，并参加课外教师指导。 为了加强STEM社区内的师生合作，学者们将通过网络，实地考察，工作阴影活动，招聘会和实习机会参与职业探索机会。为了培养科学的自我认同和自我效能感，学生每学期将从专业发展机会的菜单中进行选择，以获得研究经验，并培养领导能力和工作技能。 该项目的评价和评估将为从传统STEM教学到专业教学的转型过程提供信息。 形成性评估将通过学期末检查表和调查来跟踪学者在该计划中的经验。总结性评估将通过问卷调查来完成，比较学生在开始与结束的程序和学生的表现数据对基线队列的统计分析。 传统弱势群体在STEM领域的表现不佳是一个有据可查的现象，该项目有望提供一个抵消这种表现不佳的模式。MILES计划增加了课程组成部分，一个全面的教师咨询系统，并鼓励STEM部门跟踪与STEM相关学生途径的进展和完成相关的数据。形成性和总结性评估的结果将是越来越多的社区学院感兴趣的，这些学院正在重新设计其学术课程，以提供连贯的途径，从而改善学生的毕业和转学。

With funding from the National Science Foundation's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) program, the STEM MILES (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Mentoring Innovative Learning Experiences for Students) project is providing support to low-income students with demonstrated financial need and academic promise to succeed in STEM disciplines at Santa Rosa Junior College. This effort aims to improve the academic outcomes of low-income, academically talented STEM students by expanding the role that community college faculty play in advising and mentoring while pairing that role with financial support. Community college students will be provided with the high-touch, focused-faculty advising model, typically found at smaller private four-year institutions of higher education. Sixty low-income students majoring in Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, or Mathematics will be recruited, in three cohorts of twenty students over the grant life span. Led by an interdisciplinary team of STEM faculty at Santa Rosa Junior College, the STEM MILES project will provide interventions that develop students' scientific self-efficacy, identity, motivation, and values that are known to promote successful transfer to four-year institutions or completion of degrees in the STEM fields. To reinforce their sense of belonging to the scientific community and encourage their perseverance in STEM academic pathways, the MILES scholars will enroll in an interdisciplinary course on Critical Thinking in the Sciences and participate in co-curricular faculty mentoring. To enhance faculty-student collaborations within the STEM community, the scholars will participate in career exploration opportunities through networking, field trips, job shadowing events, career fairs, and internship opportunities. To foster scientific self-identity and self-efficacy, the students will select from a menu of professional development opportunities every semester, in order to gain experience with research, as well as build leadership and job skills. The evaluation and assessment of this project will inform the transformative process from traditional STEM instruction to specialized instruction. Formative assessment will track the experience of the scholars through the Program via end-of-semester checklists and surveys. The summative assessment will be done via questionnaires comparing students at the beginning versus the end of the program and the statistical analysis of student performance data against a baseline cohort. The underperformance of traditionally disadvantaged groups in the STEM fields is a well-documented phenomenon, and this project holds promise for providing a model that counteracts that underperformance. The MILES Program adds curricular components, a comprehensive system of faculty advising, and encourages the STEM departments to track data related to the progress and completion of STEM-related student pathways. The results of formative and summative assessments will be of interest to the increasing number of community colleges that are redesigning their academic programs to provide coherent pathways leading to improved student graduation and transfer.